Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe’s Honour, Sharpe’s Regiment, Sharpe’s Siege. Bernard Cornwell
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off a ring that she wore above her lace glove and handed it to him. He pressed it into hot wax and gave the signet back to her.
‘Thank you, Helene.’
‘Don’t thank me, Pierre.’ She stared at him with a slight, mocking smile on her face. ‘Do you open the Emperor’s letters to me, Pierre?’
‘Of course not.’ He frowned at such a thought, while inside he was wondering how Napoleon sent such letters so that they avoided his men.
‘I thought not.’ She licked her lips. ‘You know he’s still fond of me.’
‘I believe he stays fond of all his lovers.’
‘You’re so very sweet, Pierre.’ She turned her folded parasol in her hands. ‘You know he thinks of me as quite an expert on Spanish matters? He asks my advice even?’
‘So?’ Ducos stared at her.
‘I must congratulate you, Pierre. I told the Emperor that your idea for the Treaty was magnificent.’ She smiled at the shock on his face. ‘Truly, Pierre! Magnificent. That was the very word I used. Of course, I told him we might beat Wellington first, but if we didn’t? Magnificent!’ She smiled a victor’s smile. ‘So you’re not going to stop my little wagons crossing the border, are you?’
‘I have already made my promise.’
‘But to whom, sweet little Pierre? To whom?’ She said the last two words as she opened the door. She smiled again. ‘Good day, Major. It was such a small pleasure.’
He listened to her heels on the stone of the passage and felt bitterly angry. Napoleon, always a fool for a pair of legs in a bed, had told the Golden Whore about Valençay? And now she dared to threaten him? That if her puny wagons did not reach France then she would betray her country by revealing the Treaty’s existence?
He walked onto the ramparts. The letter she had written was in his hand, and it was the key to the Treaty. Today he would give it to the Inquisitor, and tomorrow the Inquisitor, with his brother, would start the journey westwards. Within three days, he decided, the matter would be irreversible, and within another two weeks he would sew up that pretty mouth for ever.
He watched her greet General Verigny beneath him, watched her climb with the General into her carriage, and he thought with what joy he would see that whore brought low. She dared to threaten him? Then she would live to regret the threat throughout eternity.
He turned back to his office. He would defy her. He would save France, defeat Britain, and dazzle the world with his cleverness. For a few seconds, standing with his back to the magnificent view from Burgos’s ramparts, he imagined himself as the new Richelieu, the new bright star in France’s glory. He could not lose, he knew it, for he had calculated the risks, and he would win.
‘Tents!’ Sharpe spat the word out. ‘Goddamned bloody tents!’
‘For sleeping in, sir.’ Sergeant Patrick Harper kept a rigidly straight face. The watching men of the South Essex grinned.
‘Bloody tents.’
‘Clean tents, sir. Nice and white, sir. We could make flower gardens round them in case the lads get homesick.’
Sharpe kicked one of the enormous canvas bundles. ‘Who needs goddamned tents?’
‘Soldiers, sir, in case they get cold and wet at night.’ Harper’s thick Ulster accent was rich with amusement. ‘I expect they’ll give us beds next, sir, with clean sheets and little girls to tuck us up at night. And chamberpots, sir, with God save the King written on their rims.’
Sharpe kicked the heap of tents again. ‘I’ll order the Quartermaster to burn them.’
‘He can’t do that, sir.’
‘Of course he can!’
‘Signed for, sir. Any loss will be deducted from pay, sir.’
Sharpe prowled round the great heap of obscene bundles. Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, stupid things, the Horse Guards had sent tents! Soldiers had always slept in the open! Sharpe had woken in the morning with his hair frozen to the ground, had woken with his clothes sopping wet, but he had never wanted a tent! He was an infantryman. An infantryman had to march, and march fast, and tents would slow them down. ‘How are we supposed to carry the bloody things?’
‘Mules, sir, tent mules. One to two companies. To be issued tomorrow, sir, and signed for.’
‘Jesus wept!’
‘Probably because he didn’t have a tent, sir.’
Sharpe smiled, because he was enjoying himself, but this sudden arrival of tents from headquarters posed problems he did not need. The tents would need five mules to carry them. Each mule could carry two hundred pounds, plus thirty more pounds of forage that would keep the animal alive for six days. If they marched on a campaign like last summer’s then he would have to assume that forage would be short and extra mules would have to carry extra forage. But the extra mules would need feed too, which meant more mules still, and if he assumed a march of six weeks then that was nine hundred extra pounds of forage. That would need four to five more mules, but those mules would need an extra seven hundred pounds of feed which would mean four more mules, who would also need forage; and so on, until the ridiculous but accurate conclusion was reached that it would take fourteen extra mules simply to keep the five tent-carrying mules alive! He kicked another tent. ‘Christ, Patrick! It’s ridiculous!’
It was three days since the French had surrendered to them in the hills. They had marched north from the bridge, suddenly leaving the approaches to Salamanca and coming into an area of hills and bad tracks. Waiting for them was the bulk of the army, and a white-grey pile of goddamned tents. Sharpe scowled. ‘We’ll leave them in store.’
‘And have them stolen, sir?’
Sharpe swore. What Harper meant, of course, was that the storekeeper would sell the tents to the Spanish, claim that they were stolen, and have them charged to the Battalion’s accounts. ‘You know the storekeeper?’
‘Aye.’ Harper sounded dubious.
‘How much?’
‘Handful.’
Sharpe swore again. He could doubtless get five pounds out of the Battalion accounts to bribe the storekeeper, but the job would be a nuisance. ‘He’s no friend of yours, this storekeeper?’
‘He’s from County Down.’ Harper said it meaningfully. ‘Sell his own bloody mother for a shilling.’
‘You’ve got nothing on the bastard?’
‘No.’ Harper shook his head. ‘He’s tighter than an orangeman’s drum.’
‘I’ll get you the handful.’ He could sell one of the mules that would arrive tomorrow, claim it died of glanders or God knows what, and see if anyone dared question him. He shook his head in exasperation, then grinned at the big Sergeant. ‘How’s your woman?’
‘Grand, sir!’ Harper beamed. ‘Blooming, so she is. I think she’d like to cook you one of those terrible meals.’
‘I’ll come for one this week.’ Isabella was a small, dark Spanish girl whom Harper had rescued from the horror at Badajoz. Ever since that terrible night she had loyally followed the Battalion, along with the other wives, mistresses and whores who formed a clumsy tail to every marching army. Sharpe suspected that Harper would be marrying before the year’s end.
The huge Irishman pushed his shako back and scratched at his sandy hair. ‘Did your dago find you, sir?’
‘Dago?’
‘Officer; a real ribbon-merchant. He was sniffing about this morning, so he was. Looked as if he’d lost